Strange stories...intelligent speculative fiction, especially soft sci-fi (more science fantasy), urban fantasy, magical realism, dark fantasy. We tend to favor stories set in the real world with strange occurrences.

Traditional storytelling...beginning, middle, and an end. Protagonists with real conflicts...protagonists that might change, grow, develop because of those conflicts.

Beautiful images without overdoing it - balance plot with description.

Stories, especially speculative fiction, should speak to the human condition in some way.

500 - 3000 words*

Simultaneous submissions are accepted, just follow proper procedure and let us know immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.

* please query for longer (otherwise we will automatically reject longer work)

What we don't want:

Derivative characters, settings, or stories. (e.g., Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.)

Experimental forms.

Excessive gore, language, sex, and violence. The key word - excessive - and yes, it frequently is excessive in modern fiction. Make sure it works in the story. Short fiction is all about economy of words.

Bigoted attitudes, platforms, and messages.

Anything overtly political.

Flowery prose, grammatical errors, and improper submission format.

Follow standard formatting guidelines. Be professional.

Attach your story to an email as a rich text format file (rtf). Anything else will be discarded unread.

Cover letters are nice, but not necessary. Your work stands on its own merit.

Send one story at a time to: strange.pubs(at)gmail.com - replacing the (at) with @.

The subject should read: Submission "your story title"

A note from Ed: selection of any given piece is a very subjective process. Just because I drop a "no" in your mailbox, doesn't mean the piece was unpublishable (is that even a word?). The piece really might not be a good fit. We like horror--but it better be supernatural and weird; we like dark humor; we don't like to take ourselves too seriously, but we do like a piece to move us.

Short Fiction: You receive one copy of the annual anthology in which your work appears, a discount on additional copies, and $5 U.S. (five bucks isn't much, but we're trying to build something here; your writing is worth much more than we could ever pay)

We ask for first serial rights for inclusion in the annual anthology.

All writers and artists retain the full copyrights to their work.

Questions? Email: strange.pubs(at)gmail.com - replacing the (at) with @. Subject line: Submission question.